Can i delete selective system restore points ?

[whs]

Nikki, back to your original question. You said that you have "too many" restore points. Now what is "too many"? Granted, if your OS disk is 400GBs, then you have about 1 to 2 months worth of restore points (depending on the number of downloads and uinstalls). That may be too many. But on the other hand, if you have such a large disk, you are probably not starving from disk space. You can, of course, reduce the shadowstorage space and this article ( How to reduce disk space used by Windows Vista system restore - Download Squad ) decribes how to do that. Figure about 1GB per shadow and you get 1 per day of operation plus 1 with every installation and uninstall. Then you can calculate how many "safe days" you would like.
Else, I always recommend to do system imaging (ghosting) of the whole system. I do this once a week with Norton Ghost (on 3 systems) and the Maxtor One Touch disk (on a fourth system). There are many programs out there (free and fee) with which you can do that. But the Maxtor route is the easiest because it comes with all the (easy to use) tools - and for ghosting you need a disk anyhow.

[iMav]

Well, 1 doesn't need to delete specific points in the first place. System Restore keeps on filling the allotted space and once filled it will keep on deleting Restore points chronologically.

For your requirement I'd suggest following the method stated by Ravi, is the only way by which you can delete Restore points, note that this method will delete all Restore Points except the last created.

Now, if MS provides the option to delete all Restore Points except the last one, I'm not sure about the threading of Restore points.

[whs]

iMav, good point on the threading. That's something we should investigate a little further. However, the deletion method you suggest (with disk cleanup) will only be a temporary solution. Over time, the system will go back and reclaim it's 15% of the OS disk. If that's what you want to avoid, you have to resize the shadowstorage to less than 15% or whatever.

[HappyAndyK]

This is becoming quite an interesting discussion ! Maybe these threads will throw more light and help us understand a few things:

Selective Delete/Save Restore Points? - Vista Help

Can I manually delete selected restore points?

Selective Delete/Save Restore Points? - Vista Forums

Recovery Points - Selective Deletion? - Tech Support Forum

The Elder Geek on Windows XP > Deleting Particular Restore Points

[iMav]

Originally Posted by whs

iMav, good point on the threading. That's something we should investigate a little further. However, the deletion method you suggest (with disk cleanup) will only be a temporary solution. Over time, the system will go back and reclaim it's 15% of the OS disk. If that's what you want to avoid, you have to resize the shadowstorage to less than 15% or whatever.

Yup, as I said it will keep on filling the space specified with Restore points then will start deleting. So it depends.

Thanks for the links Anand, going through them. I did search a bit and there was nothing worthwhile.

[whs]

Here is a a couple of links that explain how the shadowstorage works:

How Volume Shadow Copy Service Works: Data Recovery
Windows Administration: Rapid Recovery with the Volume Shadow Copy Service

[HappyAndyK]

This is the word I received from the Internal Windows Expert from Microsoft:

“The answer for selectively deleting restore points is “NO” cannot do that. I have checked from Sysinternals and there is no tool from them.”

[whs]

That makes sense given the structure.